Assassin's Creed Shadows has an early secret weapon that's easy to miss, but you have to get: 'I haven’t even been hit once since I found it'

Assassin's Creed Shadows players are discovering an overpowered weapon, the Igan Sunset tanto, which allows for time-slowing Escape Strikes, making combat incredibly easy and potentially game-breaking before Ubisoft balances it.

Assassin's Creed Shadows has been out for just over a week, but if you're just settling in to play it this weekend, stop what you're doing. There's an incredibly overpowered weapon that you can get very early on, and it has an awesome effect that you don't want to miss out on.

The Igan Sunset is a tanto that you can get from a legendary chest in the game's starting area, Izumi Settsu. With it, Naoe can slow down time by performing an Escape Strike. This is a very early ability you can unlock in the tanto skill tree that allows you to do a quick attack and then dodge back. Just press the quick or strong attack button followed by the dodge button, and you'll slash, then leap backward.

Normally, the Escape Strike creates a little distance, but with the Igan Sunset equipped, time is slowed for enemies, but Naoe moves at her normal speed, meaning foes have no time to raise their weapons to block your next attacks.

This effect turns Naoe into the fastest, most deadly assassin since Basim and his ability to seemingly teleport straight to multiple enemies and kill them in a lighting-fast chain. In Assassin's Creed Mirage, it's meant to be a glitch in the Animus caused by how fast he is, not an actual teleport, and now Naoe can sort of do the same thing. This proves she really would win in a fight against Yasuke.

To get the tanto, Polygon states you simply go to the legendary chest in the Izumi Settsu region. It's located in Tozuku’s Lair, a small enemy camp just north of your hideout, close to the Katano Foothills viewpoint.

Over on Reddit, people are already calling this ability "broken." You can also spam it infinitely, which one user calls "insane" and adds, "I haven’t even been hit once since I found it." You'd better use it now because Ubisoft will undoubtedly want to balance this by giving it a cooldown or something.

While you're here, check out our list of the best Assassin's Creed games in the series.